Blood Will Out
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Only truly good people are granted the gift of the Change. The wolf within Sansa causes her to struggle with urges she'd rather pretend she didn't have. Meanwhile, Sandor's not sure what it means when he starts to feel... different... during the full moon, but he does know that if it keeps up, he'll need to buy more whetstone oil. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

Everyone knew only good people, the _best_ people, were able to shift, that the gods looked within each person and saw the true quality of their hearts and blessed only the finest of them with such a sacred ability.

This 'goodness clause' gave cause for resentment, sometimes— Sansa's mother had never shifted into one of the merfolk the Tully's were known to become, yet the bastard she resented so had become a wolf before his tenth birthday. Catelyn took it as a personal insult that the gods would consider a mere child more deserving of Their gift than she, and sniffed that a person's humanity was more important, anyway.

Ned dared not suggest that her capacity for such resentment and disdain might be the reason the gods denied it to her.

Thus first Robb, then Jon, and then Arya had been granted the Change. All were delighted.

Theon's limbs made not a single twitch toward becoming tentacles in all the years he lived with the Starks. Laughing, he declared himself relieved about that, since Winterfell was nowhere near the open sea, and he didn't fancy having to boil himself into a weak soup in the hot pools to stay alive, but there was a glint in his eyes that said he was not as jolly about it as he seemed.

Sansa tried her hardest to reject the wolf she feared was within her, truly she did. She imitated her mother in shunning Jon, she followed her septa's lead in berating Arya's wild ways, she scolded Bran for his reckless climbing and Rickon for being half-wolf even when fully in human form. She nitpicked flaws in the servants' performance, was waspish to any who tried to befriend her, and in general was as unkind as she could be, within the limits of the stringent politeness drilled into her from infancy.

It didn't work.

Apparently, the gods saw past her charades and found her worthy, because the following month after she flowered, the week she expected blood once more, she awoke one morning to find that, sometime during the night, she had become a wolf instead.

Her balance was both off and more secure at the same time. It was bizarre for her face to be so close to the ground. She was horrified that her bottom was bent over and so far behind her and exposed. She could smell _everything_. Which was far from a blessing, as most things seemed to smell bad. Interesting, but bad.

Panicked, she tried to go her parents, but the door was shut and locked and she could not open it with just four paws and a long snout of sharp teeth. She began howling in despair, and soon their footsteps thudded close.

Ned and Catelyn fell to their knees to hold her, when they opened the door and found her there. She was a whimpering bundle of fur until, with a rolling shiver, she was a sobbing naked girl.

"I'm sorry, Mother," she wept over and over, "I tried so hard, I'm sorry."

Catelyn met her husband's gaze over their daughter's huddled form as he tugged a blanket from the bed to wrap around Sansa.

"I know you w-wanted me to be a lady, and proper, and I tried so hard not to let this happen…"

Ned tugged her into his arms, cradling her as he had when she was an infant.

 _What_ _'s that about?_ his drawn-together brows asked.

 _I don_ _'t know,_ Catelyn's widened eyes replied.

"But now it's all ruined, and—"

"How it is ruined, lemoncake, to be a wolf like your brothers and sister and father?" Ned interrupted, but gently. "Are you ashamed of our family?"

"No!" Sansa protested, face tear-stained as she lifted it to him. "But I see how how disgusted Mother is about Jon, how she thinks Arya should be less wild, and—"

Catelyn shut her eyes, in comprehension and sorrow. "Sansa, I am not disgusted with Jon." Her lips compressed. "Not about being a wolf. And Arya _should_ be less wild. But those things have nothing to do the Change. It is only during the Change, and a day after, that a person is any different from usual. You can still be as proper a lady as you like, except for those few occasions when you… aren't."

They sat there, on the cold stone floor, in silence while Sansa absorbed this new information and calmed.

"I think," said Ned, "that you should get to know other shifters, as well. Not just our family."

The problem was that there were none at all near to Winterfell. The closest were the Mormont bears, and the idea of spending time on that wind-scoured island with those fierce woman, who positively reveled in their primitive sides, made Sansa shudder. Ned and Catelyn made inquiries with other families, however, and waited for replies.

Meanwhile, Sansa was loathing every moment of this new aspect of her life. It was all so… uncouth, transforming into a beast, with one's muscles and bones contorting until one was an entire other being, snapping and slavering.

The nudity made it all the more embarrassing, happening as it did during high emotional moments. The time that Robb had burst into a huge gray wolf and back again in the middle of dinner because the serving maid's bubbies were almost entirely on display was still remarked upon, years later, to his deep chagrin.

She knew that was stupid; that, as a wolf, she had no private parts easily revealed, and a thick coat of fur to cover what _was_ there, besides, but a decade of her septa's instructions and admonitions about modesty, about decency and purity, had left its indelible mark on her tender psyche.

Worse still was the way her senses sharpened, picking out details her human eyes could never have perceived. Feral appetites bloomed and grew, when the Change was upon her, and for a day afterward, to where she could not trust herself to eat in public for fear of humiliating herself with how she would gobble all the food in sight, heedless of crumbs as they smeared her cheeks or juices running down her chin.

And once her belly was full and Sansa couldn't take another bite, another, more worrisome urge reared its head, nose twitching at the dispersal of scent from the men around her, ears pricked in anticipation of a sound, any sound, that might indicate a potential companion for the rut.

It hadn't been so bad, at first, but she had been confused. Jory evoked in her not a whisper of fascination, though he was young and strong and comely, but one day her father had joined Sansa and her mother in the solar after an afternoon of sparring, the scents of leather and sweat heavy upon him, and Sansa almost fell from her chair at the way something clenched and held, deep inside her.

Then there was the time she'd found herself prowling after her half-brother, as he moved about Winterfell. A primal need to feel him sink into her, fangs and, and… male part… both, had curled in her belly, making her pant in shame and arousal until she forced the wolf back, racing to her chamber and crawling into her bed. She rucked up her skirts and slid her fingers through the drenched folds between her legs, the relief as immediate as it was shameful. Sansa stroked herself to a minor cataclysm, unable to stifle the howls as they poured from her throat.

That night, she had gone to her parents, requesting she visit her Aunt Lysa at the Aerie, or perhaps spend time at the Tully citadel of Riverrun. They did not ask why; her hesitant words and scalding blushing must have been enough of an explanation. They had had to send Robb and Theon and Jon away to the Umbers at Last Hearth just a few months after Arya's first Change, after all. Jon had only returned to prepare for his departure to The Wall to take the black.

Sansa's trip South had been announced the next day.

It was while she and her father had progressed toward Riverrun that Robert Baratheon's raven had arrived, commanding Ned's presence in King's Landing.

"Do you mind going there instead?" he asked Sansa.

"No," was her reply, for she sincerely felt anywhere was better than where her own family was a temptation to her. Robb and Theon could return to Winterfell, and Bran and Rickon could grow up without her fearing, once they came into their own wolves, that she might lose control with them.

She had an idle thought about how Arya handled her own… urges… before it was quickly banished. That was Arya's own burden, and Sansa would not pry into such a deeply private issue.

King's Landing was a shock, after the relative peace and spaciousness of Winterfell; noisy, dirty, smelly, nevertheless it was bright and colorful and warm. She was pleased at the delicate yet rigid rules of decorum, everything in her responding to the clarity and ease of interacting with others. There were no open verbal battles such as she was accustomed to with Arya, but as time went on, she realized there was also far less humor, and that an undercurrent of alternative meanings flowed beneath the surface of the conversations, laced with a faint green tinge of malice.

She had been shocked to learn that no one in the royal family shifted. Myrcella and Tommen were still too young, but the king and queen and eldest prince remained steadfastly human each and every day of each and every month. It said quite a bit about the gods' opinions of them, Sansa thought, though she'd never give voice to such a traitorous thought.

The court, in fact, had developed a custom that shifting was common, was trashy, was base and low. Those who changed were _beasts_ , it was declared, and Sansa came to understand the sly whispers of those whose eyes followed her around the Red Keep. The flames of rumor were fed assiduously by Petyr Baelish, who Ned said had most desperately wanted to fly in mockingbird form while fostered with the Tully's in his youth, but not so much as a pin-feather had ever shifted on him.

Few of the court shifted, in fact, despite being from families of the blood. It was said that King Robert's brother Renly did, but not Stannis; that the Tyrell sons shifted, but not the daughter, father, or family matriarch. Interestingly, Prince Oberyn of the Martells was rumored to be able to shift some months, but not others; that he had gone years without shifting, in fact, before doing it every month for another set of years.

Sansa thought this meant that perhaps as people became better or worse, so too did their ability to shift come and go. She had always believed it a solid, permanent state, but clearly the gods wanted to monitor Their children on a daily basis instead of just peeking in at the verge of adulthood and making Their eternal determination.

Time went on. Sansa was careful to lock herself in her room during the full moons, so that there would be no embarrassing misunderstandings should she meet up with a male of the blood who might appeal to her wolf in a way she would regret. So, too, did she wish to avoid being observed by the court, and especially by Joffrey, who had become a creature all his own, something twisted and writhing with darkness even as his outward form remained handsome.

Disaster struck; King Robert was killed, and Joffrey took the throne. Ned was arrested, then sentenced to execution, and on that day Sansa's control over her emotions failed her in public for the first time. In her grief, her lamentations became howls, and her straining form shifted from that of pleading girl to desperate wolf, muscles bunching beneath fur to spring to her father's defense.

Ned, bent as he was over the block, was having trouble keeping his own form in its original shape as his wolf tried to break free.

"Hurry," he told Ilyn Payne, wanting to make it pass quickly, for Sansa's sake.

Her lapse into wolf-form made her the laughing-stock of the court, much to Joffrey's delight. He began to devise cunning new ways to try and make her shift due to high emotion, beginning with mere insults and humiliations and progressing steadily to physical abuses when the wolf within her refused to leap to his bait.

For the first time, Sansa embraced her wolf, held it close to her, drew strength and endurance from it. Something cold had solidified within her, some core of steel and fur and blood, some resolution that they would not find it so easy to break her.

This core served her well, month after month after month. The abuses grew more frequent, and more brutal, and still she remained stubbornly human. It became worse when Joffrey called off their engagement and instead announced his betrothal to Margaery Tyrell, the Tyrell who the gods did not see fit to grant a Change. Sansa thought it a match made in all seven heavens, and said as much with perfect honesty, to the misunderstanding delight of the happy new couple.

Her sole bulwark throughout all of this, her lone support, her only counselor, was also the most unexpected: the scarred giant in Joffrey's guard, in his cloak as big and white as one of the sails on the ships Sansa watched, longing to sweep out of the harbor forever on one.

Hound, they called him, though he had a name, and mocked him for having an animal's name without an animal's blood. He came to her in odd moments like a wizard in a play, to impart some pearl of wisdom before slipping off into the shadows off-stage. Sansa always came away from each interaction feeling confused, grateful, and worried, all at once.

Then he met her on the Serpentine, on the day after her full moon Change, and there was something in his scent and proximity that provoked the same reaction in her that she'd had to Jon, those many months ago. Clegane had been in the middle of disguising advice with his usual barrage of invective, insulting her manners and voice and everything else, when her senses, still animal-sharp from yesterday's shift, became aware that his fierceness was… not just mere irritation.

Sansa let her lips part, the better to roll in a breath over her tongue, to inhale him deeply.

 _Yessss, this beast was in season and make no mistake about it._

She eyed the thick vein at the side of his neck and thought of how much she'd like to sink her teeth into the flesh around it, just close and deep enough that he'd feel all the danger of her. She wouldn't hurt him, no. Just spice up his flavor with a hint of alarm, make him wonder the smallest bit if he'd come out of it alive.

Sansa roused from her thoughts to find that he had fallen silent, had finished his tirade and was staring at her with an expression that could have been surprise, or bemusement, or concern.

"Your eyes," he said, with admirable calm, "have gone yellow."

Sansa stepped closer, going one stair down so they were but a hand's thickness apart, so her face was directly level with that tempting, throbbing vein, and trailed her nose up his throat. He was salt and blood and musk and she wanted to back into him, feel his long body curve over her as he thrust in—

"Yours have gone brown," she replied, after straightening, and so they had, turning to the liquid darkness of rich earth.

Clegane went pale beneath his ruddy tan, and clamped those eyes shut, drawing in breath through his nose as fists the size of boulders clenched and opened, clenched and opened. When he opened his eyes again, they were their customary gray, with clear sclera, piercing and hostile as ever.

Without a word, he turned and left her there on the steps.

Sandor had noticed the girl right away, because of her looks. She was lovely, in all the ways he'd never realized he preferred. Apparently he'd been craving a woman with hair like the fire that had destroyed him, with gentle ways that reached some parched place inside him, with a hatred for injustice that rivaled his own, with strength that made him recognize a kindred spirit who had overcome, just as he had.

It hadn't happened at first, not when all he'd done was hissed a few words of advice into her ear about how to please Joffrey while passing on the stairs or in a corridor. But on the day Ser Dontos had cooked his own goose with his foolishness, when Sandor lied to the king for her— He! Had lied! To the king! For her!— to protect her from Joffrey's wrath, he noticed something was… amiss… on the evening of the next full moon.

He had been edgy all day, for one thing, in a way that even flagon after flagon of sour red could not blunt. And the wine had tasted different, did not satisfy him. The color appealed, but it was disappointing on his tongue, lacking the thickness and taste of copper he longed for.

His fingertips felt itchy. He hadn't known such a thing were possible, but there it was— he rubbed them and rubbed them against the coarse weave of his trousers, not realizing until almost too late that his hand had moved closer and closer to his groin until he was rubbing it directly. The itching in his fingertips ceased, but at what cost? Disgracing himself in a winesink? Even now, some of the patrons were eying him, uneasy, clearly hoping he wouldn't pull out his cock and have a public wank right in front of them.

 _Fucking hell._

He had pulled his cloak around himself and swept from the winesink, stomping back to the Keep at a punishing pace. Once in his quarters, he flung off his armor and clothing with as much speed as he could manage, then fell backward onto his bed, hands on his cock before his back hit the mattress.

One stroke, two, a third. His muscles locked as he let out a strangled outcry. He sincerely hoped it could not be heard beyond the thick stone walls and sturdy oaken door, because there would be no doubt as to its cause, and wouldn't that be rich, giving the other cunts in the Kingsguard more ammunition to taunt him.

As if his face weren't enough.

Also not enough was that single wank. Sandor fell headlong into a weary sleep, only to awaken a mere hour later, his skin sensitized against the prickly weave of his blanket everywhere it touched, building an excitement in his belly that rippled outward.

He was mortified, even as he wrapped his palm around himself again, that the old faded wool was the reason behind this sudden rebirth of arousal, but it just felt so _good_. And who was there to see, or know? He was alone, as ever, and gave himself permission to writhe against the blanket, just a little, enjoying the soft abrasion's tingle, feeling it all flow ever inward toward the center of his body, where one hand stroked and the other cupped and squeezed.

He came.

He slept.

He awoke, then stroked himself, and came again.

And again.

He was very grateful for the bottle of oil he kept in his room for sword-sharpening purposes. It served to whet a different sword, that night.

When the sun began to brighten the sky from pure black to something more bruise-like, Sandor was on the verge of a fifth climax in as many hours. Concern had blossomed into fear long ago, but he could no more stop what he was doing than he could empty all the seas with a soup-bowl.

As sensation began to overcome him once again, the Stark girl flashed before his mind's eye, lissome as a reed, pale and lovely, and that hair… he imagined it trailing over his body, imagined her wrapping it around his cock before she lowered her mouth to him, imagined the wet suction…

Breath shuddering through him like a bellows, he watched as his mind showed him an image of Sansa bending over the Serpentine's railing, a mare offering herself in rut to a stallion. The flesh at her center split open, gleaming the tender pink of a shell's interior. Sandor nosed at her, inhaling her musk before taking a taste, letting the salt of her paint his mouth with its flavor.

He saw Sansa swaying her hips with an impatient whine. She stared over her shoulder at him, wondering why he didn't take her. She had waited for him, hadn't she? She had waited so long, and been so good, but he wasn't—

And then he _was_ , he was right there, the head of his cock finding the wet notch of her before pressing inward, his hands steady on her arse as she shifted, uneasy as a new-broken horse trying to find its balance. She was unsure, inexperienced, but he would guide her through. She would be safe with him.

Sansa looked back one last time, lids heavy, breath panting past lips reddened and wet. His hand, the surrogate for her body, flew along his shaft, tighter and tighter until finally the thread of tension within him snapped. He came and came and came, in heavy gouts that burned like drops of molten steel on his skin. Her scent, taste and touch faded slowly like ghosts, leaving him alone with nothing but the briny smell of his own release.

Sandor felt a bone-deep exhaustion. This time, when he slept, he did not awaken until a pounding on his door roused him abruptly.

"Hound!" shouted Boros, hammering with such enthusiasm at the oak that Sandor was sure his fist would leave impressions. "You've never been this late before! What a whore you must have used last night, she must have cost her weight in stags! Is there any gold left from your tourney winnings?"

His braying laughter, as he ambled off down the hall, pushed Sandor closer to cold-blooded murder than he'd ever been before.

"Go fuck yourself, you useless cunt!" he shouted back, heaving himself to his feet and toward the washbasin to go about the business of making himself as presentable as he could in the shortest possible time.

Washed, dressed, armored, he rushed to Joffrey's solar. After a few minutes of his liege's usual feeble attempts at cruel jibes, his lateness was forgotten and they went about their day as usual. Sandor had the usual copious opportunity to think as he stood, bored and uninvolved, behind the king. He spent it wondering why his last wank had satisfied him when all the previous ones, blindingly pleasurable as they'd been, had not.

The only difference had been Sansa's presence in his thoughts while he did it.

Sandor did not know much about shifters; there were none in his godsforsaken family, despite the Cleganes' crest of dogs, since not one of them even approached the goodness everyone knew the gods required for such a gift.

And the Lannisters, well… there had been some in the past who had shifted into lions, and once upon a time Tywin's sons had shifted, if Sandor recalled correctly, until they were sixteen or thereabouts. Tywin himself never had a hope in hell, nor had Cersei, and Joffrey… ha.

Robert had shifted in his youth, to a stag of course, but not long into his reign the Change had started skipping months and eventually ceased coming altogether. Robert had laughed it off, saying that he'd much rather enjoy wine and whores on full moon nights, instead of running about the forest, but his words rang hollow, and every month, that night was spent in a royal drunken stupor.

Sandor decided that he had just been far overdue for a woman, and his frequency of seeing and conversing with the Stark girl had wound him up, was all. Her ability to shift was a novelty to him. It would doubtless be fine from then on.

Until the next month, when it had happened again: the entire night was a blur of restless, itchy excitement that no amount of drink would cure, unrelieved until he submitted to the agonizing pleasure that only ceased when he permitted himself to imagine Sansa taking his cock, of him flooding her with his release until she was full to the brim with it.

The third month, when his fingertips itched, he didn't bother going to the winesink, just stayed in his room with the bottle of sword oil nearby. This time, however, he let the fantasy happen right away, instead of fighting it off until the last, and found that after his sole climax he slept the remainder of the night and woke refreshed and energized.

Comprehension bloomed, along with a sort of curdled apprehension. Why her? Why him? At first, he'd helped Sansa only because he saw in her the same blind faith in the goodness of knights that he'd had before reality— and Gregor— had put paid to those dreams. He thought to spare or lessen for her the misery he'd endured, to toughen her up before it could happen, so she was better prepared.

But somewhere, along the way, she'd stopped being an avatar for his younger self, and become wholly herself, beautiful and resilient and trying so, so hard. That trying of hers would break his heart some day, he thought.

He met her on the Serpentine, the next morning, meaning to berate her into some more counsel for how to please Joffrey, but she had been… odd. Different. Not her usual shrinking, wide-eyed self. She was heavy-lidded, and seemed bursting with some sort of secret intent he was not sure he wanted to know the cause of.

She had gotten good at meeting his eye, but that day, she stared at his neck, like she wanted to tear off a chunk of it, and the idea did not cause Sandor to fear. There were a thousand worse ways to die, and he'd committed each one of them. Feeling this girl's teeth in his throat would be the least, and best, of all of them.

Her eyes, that clear summer blue, went a feral gold in a heartbeat's space. His own senses seemed to sharpen— he could hear the distant cries of the gulls on the harbor as if they were right behind him, he could see each separate lash framing those shifted eyes of hers, and the pungency between her legs was as fresh and hot in his nostrils as if his face were buried there.

"Your eyes," he told her, "have gone yellow."

She came so near to him that he could almost _taste_ her, and longing for it pounded through him. Her nose trailed from his collarbone to jaw, a fleeting streak of heat that had his breath catching, and for one wild second he thought he might bend her over the railing, thought he might fling up her skirts and press himself into that hot wet place that he knew, he just _knew,_ waited for him-

"Yours have gone brown," she answered.

Everything within him froze. It was one thing to be affected by a shifter; quite another to _become_ one. How—? Why—? He clenched his eyes, and fists, and willed away the sudden acuity of his senses. Slowly they faded, and once more all he could smell was the faint tang of sea air, and all he could hear was the thudding of his own pulse as it pounded through his head.

He told himself he was not fleeing. Was not afraid, not of a slip of a girl, a foolish thing who could barely keep herself alive without him telling her how.

But he was, at heart, an honest man, and knew it for the lie it was.

He was terrified.

Not of her— not truly— but of what she had wrought in him. Or of what the gods had wrought because of his attempts to help her.

Did it mean… could it _possibly_ be… after all these years, all those killings, that they found him— _him_ , a Clegane, brother to the vilest mockery of knighthood to ever exist— worthy of the Change?

He called upon his stores of willpower and made it through the remainder of the day without mishap, but once in his room that evening, he buried his face in his hands and contemplated the implications of such a thing. All night long, over and over, he turned the idea in his mind, examining it, studying it…

…wanting it.

 _Longing_ for it.

If the gods, whose existences he'd never truly believed in, not even when he gained personal experience of shifters, deemed him deserving of Their gift, then perhaps…

Just maybe…

…he was. He might be.

Worthy.

And that changed so much. It changed _everything_. It meant he hadn't deserved what Gregor had done to him. It meant that their father's weakness had been unjust, that he really had had been wronged, and that more than just Sandor knew it. That the gods knew it, and understood, and had been watching him all these years, and watched him still.

And that they cared.

And that they wanted more for him.

For the first time since he was six, Sandor allowed the ache in his chest to feel… well, not full, but a little less hollow, like it echoed a little less than before.

How to know for sure? Only time would tell.

In a month, on the next full moon, he would know.


	2. Chapter 2

It turned out not taking that long. Mere days later, Sansa's brother, Robb, self-proclaimed King in the North, won a crushing victory over Lannister forces at Oxcross, and Jaime Lannister had been taken prisoner. Sandor knew, as Joffrey's face purpled with incandescent fury, that the king would seek to take it out on the most convenient Stark he had to hand.

"Bring her to me," Joffrey hissed at Boros Blount, who skipped right off to bring the girl to the throne room.

When she'd been manhandled into the huge chamber, Joffrey raged at her, shrieking that she would pay for her brother's success while she wept and pleaded with him. Meryn stepped forward with unseemly eagerness, landing a punch to her belly and a slap across the thighs with his sword that Sandor knew would bloom with bruises the next day.

Once Joffrey had calmed, however, he seemed to recall his game of trying to make the wolf burst from Sansa's skin. And beating her hadn't made it happen.

"Trant, I think my lady is overdressed," he declared, settling back with a sly smirk on his hideous throne. "Unburden her."

Meryn obediently wrenched at her gown until she was bared to the waist, all sunset hair cascading over pale-glowing skin. Sansa sobbed, hunching over to shield her bareness.

And then she arched away from Meryn, moaning in a way that could not come from a human throat. She dropped the shreds of silk she had clutched close and fell forward onto her hands. A shudder, a ripple rolling from head to toe, and then the girl was gone, and a silver wolf stood in her place, slipping free of the ruined gown and shaking out its fur.

Wary yellow eyes surveyed all who surrounded her, and black lips peeled back from ivory fangs.

Joffrey _giggled_. "Finally!" he gloated. "Finally, we get to see what a beast you truly are, _Lady_ Sansa."

A murmur susurrated through the crowd, the hissing of snakes as they slithered forward to attack. Sandor felt every muscle tense, his fingers twitching madly, longing for the solid heft of his sword-hilt in his grasp. He knew not one of these fools knew the danger they were in, as long as Sansa's mind was that of a wolf and not a human.

"Meryn, Boros," Joffrey drawled, "we can't have beasts in the throne room." His amused gaze flicked toward Sandor. "My Hound notwithstanding, of course."

Sandor ignored him, his eyes fixed on the careful way Sansa picked her way around the empty center of the room, her senses exquisitely alert as she tried to track every possible threat. The other three kingsguard approached her, trying to hem her in between them, blades naked and gleaming dully.

Sandor began to shake, conflict roiling in his belly and a growl trying to fight free from between clenched teeth. He wanted to protect her, to save her, but his duty was to obey his king, and he was a _dog_ , he was _loyal_ , obeying was what dogs _did_ —

He was being torn _apart_ —

Sandor snarled in a way that could not come from a human throat, and then he was on all fours. The layers of his mind, the things that made him human, were peeling away. He had just enough time to feel a knee-weakening relief— Yes! Yes!— and then he was… something else.

Something Sandor, and something _other_. Something _more_. But still, always, something just as big as before, just as deadly.

A huge deerhound, with rather more brindling on one half of its shaggy face than the other, sprang between the kingsguards and their prey.

"Clegane, really? _You_ can shift?" Joffrey was almost in hysterics of laughter. Sandor couldn't think, in this form, not really, but he could feel, and a tide of contempt rose within him at the boy's ignorance and stupidity.

Boros and Meryn froze, waiting for their king to stop guffawing before they continued.

"Step back, men!" Joffrey shouted, gleeful. "Let the Hound tear her apart!"

Sandor turned toward Sansa. She was still crouched, watchful, yellow eyes darting without cease as she evaluated her situation and the newest threat. He padded toward her, cautious, head a little low to indicate he was not a danger to her. He stopped a few feet away, waiting.

Their audience waited, silent, scarcely breathing.

Sansa sniffed, then again. Those yellow eyes widened, showing as much surprise on a lupine face as possible. She sniffed once more, then took a halting step toward the deerhound.

"Clegane, enough," Joffrey commanded, sounding peevish. "Either attack her, or move aside so the others can."

He gave an impatient gesture to the other guards, who all approached with grim determination.

The deerhound spun around and clamped its jaws around Meryn's forearm. The bone crunched and Meryn shrieked in agony, falling back. Boros edged away, eyes rolling in fear, but Sandor managed to catch his leg between sharp teeth and rip. Boros' scream of pain echoed off the stone walls.

Ser Preston Greenfield inched forward from behind Sandor, hoping to use the deerhound's distraction to his advantage, but the wolf sprang at him. He waved his sword at her, his moves clumsy and bumbling in contrast to her effortless grace as she ducked below a ungainly sweep of steel to fly at his throat. Her teeth had just closed around it when the tall doors behind them flew open with a crash.

Sandor tried to shout a warning to Sansa, but all that came out was a bark. With a last growl down at Ser Preston's terrified face, she leapt off him and went to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with the deerhound.

Tyrion strode in, three and a half feet of leonine fury, followed by an impassive Bronn and a panicky Shae.

Abruptly, the fight went out of Sansa, and she collapsed to the ground. Sandor moved to stand right over her, straddling her unconscious form; they'd not get to her but through him, now that she were even more vulnerable than before.

"Who is that?" Tyrion demanded.

"It's… it's Clegane, my lord," gasped Ser Preston. A wet patch had spread across the front of his tunic and trousers, and blood trickled down his neck from where Sansa's fangs had scraped him. "He fought off Ser Meryn and Ser Boros when they went to follow His Grace's orders."

"To beat Lady Sansa, you mean?" was Tyrion's wry comment. He studied the deerhound for a long moment, a spark of something, nostalgia or wistfulness perhaps, in his eyes before turning to Joffrey. The Imp, at least, knew the truth of the Change, and its significance if the gods found Sandor deserving of it.

"You haven't the sense of a squirrel, nephew, but at least Clegane does," he said, voice calm, but his anger was evident. "It's one thing to be unkind to Lady Sansa, Joffrey, but physical violence? We are already losing this war! Thanks to your the imprudencies, and Robert's before you, our own allies are thin on the ground these days. The Starks have more than we do, now, and it shows with each victory they gain over us."

"The Mormont bears each fight like ten, and the Umber bears are nothing to sneeze at, either. The Tully merfolk will fuck up our waterfront properties, the flying Arryns will rain death from the sky, and the Martell serpents will poison whatever is left. And that's _if_ the Targaryens don't decide to get interested and char-broil our corpses into a fine ash.

"All we have left are the Tyrells, and…" He trailed off, blowing a dismissive huff of air out through his teeth. "Elves. Good for growing things, not much good for anything else." He stepped up to his nephew and made pointed eye contact. "Probably the only thing keeping Robb Stark from assaulting King's Landing and either razing it to the ground, or starving us out of it, is the fact that we have his sister. And if you beat her to death, we will have nothing at all with which to bargain."

Tyrion heaved a sigh and glanced back over his shoulder at where the deerhound was guarding Sansa.

"Clegane, get her back to her room. Shae, help her recuperate from today's… events. And bar the door to ensure no more take place today."

"No!" shrieked Joffrey in rage. "She's mine, to do with as I please! I am the the king! I-"

Tyrion strode onto the throne dais and slapped him into a shocked silence. "Listen to me, you little shit. Your lunacy is going to get us all killed. Your death wouldn't inconvenience me- it would likely be an enormous help, to be honest- but _my_ death certainly would. So you are going to shut up and stop acting like a madman. I will not have our family destroyed because you're too stupid to control your base urges."

Sandor forced his canine mind to focus and release its hold over him. He felt his bones shift, felt fur rustle once before it was gone, and then he was a man again. He stood, unconcerned with his nudity, and scooped Sansa's furry body into his arms before striding from the room.

"Go to my room and get me more clothes," he rumbled at Shae as he passed her, almost laughing at the expression on her face since she and the rest of the court's women seemed unable to pull their gazes from his groin. Even the other men appeared to be having trouble looking elsewhere.

For all Joffrey's golden beauty, he was built like a pre-pubescent girl and had a dick like Sandor's little finger. Meryn and Boros were paunchy and soft and white, like masses of unrisen dough. Sandor, in contrast, had the musculature of a half-giant and a body fat percentage in the single digits.

 _Aye, he might not be much to look at in the face, but he had nothing to be ashamed of, below the neck._

He was halfway through the castle's winding corridors when the furry bundle in his arms transformed into the smooth form of a young woman. Not long thereafter, she began to stir, and he tightened his grasp in anticipation of her upset when she woke. Her eyes flew open, and then her limbs began to flail.

"Calm down," he rumbled at her, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the stairs as he began to ascend them, and most definitely _not_ on her chest, which was jiggling in a most appealing fashion as she squirmed in his arms. _Her nipples looked like wild strawberries,_ he thought grimly, small and red and succulent, and he bet they'd be just as sweet, too. Images from his lewd fantasies of the past few months assailed him and he made himself breathe evenly in an effort to maintain control.

Sansa fell back against his arm, panting from exertion. "What happened? Where are we going?" She paused, her eyes traveling over what she could see of him before glancing down at herself. "Are you- why are you naked? Why am _I_ naked?"

Sandor just gripped her tighter and kept plodding up the damned endless steps. Now her breasts were pressed right up against him, their soft shape conforming to the hairy muscled expanse of his chest. This was torture. He had no doubt it was punishment for all his myriad sins, past and present.

"You shifted. I shifted. Now I'm bringing you to your room."

"Put me down," she wheezed, her breath sounding shallow and odd. He steeled himself and looked down at her; she was staring at him with a fixed, glazed stare, and a wild glint in her eyes told him she was feeling the same heightened primitive urges that were plaguing him after shifting back from his animal form.

He had a hard enough time controlling himself around her when she was fully clothed. Now they were nude, and their blood was up, and he had to get away from her as soon as possible or they were going to end up fucking each other stupid.

Then she began licking him. His neck, to be specific, and his collarbone. And her fingers were plucking insistently at his nipple when they weren't combing through his chest hair.

"Stop that," he demanded, sounding on the wheezy side as well. _Fucking hell_. He began running up the last flight of stairs, desperate to get away before he flung himself on top of her and ravished her like a beast.

Finally on the fifth floor, he jogged down the hallway and kicked in her door, dashing to the bed and dropping her on it before backing to the far side of the room. She lay there, blinking up at him in shock, her bright hair tumbling all around her, long legs sprawled out and- _oh gods_ \- he could see between them. She looked debauched, or at least ripe for debauching, and he hadn't done any for a very long time.

 _Too_ long.

Sandor had always enjoyed a good, thorough debauching.

 _Fucking, bleeding hell_.

Chest heaving from exertion, he panted, "Stay over there."

"Don't go," she said, her voice hoarse in a way that shot heat right to his groin. Her pupils were blown, only a thin rim of brilliant blue to be seen. "I've been thinking about you. All the time. I _need_ you."

The last of his fragile resistance melted away, like dew with the morning sun.

Which was when Shae skidded into the room with an armful of clothing. She saw his gigantic erection- not that she could miss it, it was like a sodding Maypole in the middle of the room- and made a choking sound, like she was drowning.

"Get the fuck out," Sandor rasped, never taking his eyes from the display of lush beauty on the bed.

"B-but-" Shae stammered in alarm.

He whipped his head around to glare at her. He knew his eyes were wild. He was barely hanging on to his human form.

"Get. The fuck. Out," he ground out between his teeth, and with a whimper, Shae dropped the pile of clothes and fled, slamming the door shut behind her.

Sandor prowled over and locked the door, then jammed a chair under the handle for good measure.

"Show me," he growled, turning back to Sansa.

"Show you what?"

" _Everything_."

She knew what he wanted to see, and leaned back on her hands, then let her legs fall apart. Her labia parted gently, showing a sliver of wet pink flesh, just enough to tantalize, and Sandor was so hard it _burned_.

Hesitantly, as if she didn't really want to but couldn't help herself, she slid a hand down her body, detouring to squeeze a breast and pinch a nipple, before coming to a halt between her thighs, where she cupped herself and slid her middle finger between her plump folds.

Her gaze dropped to his groin. She took a deep breath, eyes fixed on his cock, and said, "You.. it… it looks…"

"Looks like what, girl," Sandor barked. His impatience, never immense to begin with, had dipped into dangerously low territory. "Tell me what you want me to do."

"It looks delicious." Sansa dragged her lambent gaze up to meet his. "I want you to come here so I can suck on you."

Sandor was hit by a wave of lust so strong it almost crumpled him to his knees. He didn't remember directing his body to move across the room, but one second he was by the door, and the next he was standing by the bed, his hands in her hair, and he was directing his prick into her mouth.

Sansa took the plum-sized head of it between her lips, sucking gently while lashing her tongue against the very tip.

"Ohgodsyes," he hissed and threw his head back in ecstasy.

Sansa felt another flood of wetness between her legs and took more of him into her mouth, relishing the hardness against her palate. She'd never performed this act before, but she'd given the matter a great deal of thought, especially in last few months as the Hound— Clegane— _Sandor_ — had become more and more tempting to her.

The wolf within her responded to him, to his size and strength and dominance, in a way that she had no idea how to handle except to submit to it. She'd spent many an hour contemplating him as her lover. She'd suspected, from the first moment things had altered between them, on the Serpentine, that he'd be magnificently endowed, and she been just as magnificently correct. Even curling both hands around it at the same time couldn't cover the length entirely, and she couldn't reach her fingertips with her thumb.

By far.

It was probably going to hurt, when he finally slid it into her.

She couldn't wait.

Sansa was hazily certain that what they were doing was a terrible idea, but she couldn't muster any energy toward stopping, not when it was what she most needed to do at that moment. She wanted to run her hands over the breadth of his shoulders, rake her teeth along the tendons of his throat, rub her face against the slabs of muscle on his chest. She wanted to bury her face in his pubic hair and inhale the musk he was exuding.

Above her, Sandor made a sound like a heaving bellows, and she glanced up to find his face a rictus of agony, looking as if he were being tortured.

"Is this enough?" she asked, moving one hand from encircling his shaft to slide her fingers between her legs again.

"Is what enough?" Sandor asked, breathless, clearly having trouble focusing on her question when such bliss was to be had.

She held her hand up to him. "Is there enough… am I… will it work?"

Sandor stared down at her, then at the hand she held up to him, drenched and gleaming with her slick. He grabbed her wrist and began to lap her fingers clean, groaning as he did so, as if she were breaking him.

"I just… don't want to wait any more. To have you. Inside me." Sansa stumbled over the words, unsure, feeling ignorant and empty and knowing that he had what would fill her but he was just going so _slow_ and—

"You'll have me soon enough, girl," he rasped, and advanced, crawling across the bed as she scooted back to make room for his massive body. He palmed her knees and pulled them apart, inhaling deeply from her ankle to the join of her hip. In one swift motion, he tugged her legs over his shoulders and drove his tongue into the liquid core of her.

Sansa yelped in shocked pleasure. He knew just where she needed him, how to lick around and over her, his intuition shocking in its accuracy. She thrashed beneath him, and all the while, he continued to pant against her, lapping at her slowly like a happy hound.

She couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed, and when Sandor pulled his mouth away and looked up at her, Sansa felt a smidgen of apprehension. The hungry look on Sandor's face was intensifying to an alarming degree as he slowly crawled up her prone body. Sansa inched backwards slightly as he braced himself on his forearms above her.

"Er…" she began, even as her trembling fingers reached down of their own will to trace the muscles of his stomach. Sandor made a soft hum of anticipation, moving his hips so her fingers brushed where he ached the most for her touch.

"Shae could come back…" Despite her sudden bashfulness, Sansa couldn't stop her wide-eyed stare from moving over his wet mouth, down to the rippling muscles of his chest and stomach, and then the rather aggressive erection before her. "O-or someone else…"

"I told her to go away," he said thickly. "Doesn't matter if they do come back. If they interrupt us, I'll kill them."

"Oh," she murmured. Sansa's eyes rounded as Sandor parted her legs further so that he could kneel between them. She gasped as the slippery head of his arousal stroked against her in one long, smooth movement.

Sandor wrapped his fingers around his shaft and used it to rub the tight bead above her opening in short strokes. Her fingernails sank into his thighs deeply enough to leave marks as she tipped her head back and moaned.

Sansa held her breath as he stopped his teasing motions and then started to press into her, slow and sure. She bit her lip and stared down at where he entered her. It burned, not too badly, but the feel of her body stretching for him was almost too intense. The sight of his arousal spreading her only added to the feeling of invasion.

Slowly, the dull pain that accompanied his slow, careful penetration was joined by a growing pleasure. She had thought about him - his hands, his mouth, his body - so many times. And this time, he was here with her. She wasn't alone in the dark anymore, body burning for him, wondering. . .

The strain of holding back for her pulled his features taut, and the way he was looking at her made her feel like he wanted to devour her whole. The thought that Sandor, so stoic and self-assured, could want her that much sent fire racing through her body.

The slow, hot stroke of his entry went dark and sharp with pleasure as he glided against the part of her that he'd found with his tongue before. She made a noise that she was shocked to hear from herself, something primal-sounding, almost wild. Sansa found herself arching against him in a movement that she hadn't directed her body to make.

Arms aching from the tension, the sight of his aroused flesh slipping into her only drove him closer to losing his control. His senses sharpened at the sounds Sansa was making and how she was beginning to press up to meet him, breathing in shallow pants. She was starting to enjoy him, he realized, and was shocked at the violent surge of lust he felt at the thought.

It was impossible to hold back his groans of pleasure, though he tried; he was panting, each breath a sob as he forced his lungs to keep powering him through an event that he was starting to think might kill him. Below him, Sansa was arching and moaning, an exclamation pushed out of her with each of his thrusts, her whimpers rising in pitch and urgency as her nails bit into his skin. They'd leave marks on him, and he was glad of it, liking the idea of her marking him as hers.

He lowered his head, catching a nipple between his teeth, and Sansa keened in delight. She raked her fingers through his hair and yanked his lips to hers, kissing him with a ferocity he hadn't thought her capable of. She wanted roughness? Sandor could give her roughness.

He withdrew from her abruptly, and her eyes flashed yellow in irritation.

"I'm not stopping." He sat back on his heels and studied the scene spread out before him on the bed. She was a delicacy on a tray, to be relished and devoured, her hair a ruddy starburst around her head, a glory he never in his life thought could be his for the taking.

"Turn over," he said, his voice thick.

Comprehension turned annoyance into delight. "Yes," she agreed immediately. "This is how I've been wanting it." Sansa eagerly shifted onto her hands and knees, slinking like a cat, arse in the air.

It was the very image of his fantasies these past few months, and his mouth went dry to see how she was saturated between her legs. He plunged two fingers into her, up to the last knuckle. Sansa let out a choked cry and his eyes almost crossed at the way she rippled around his fingers.

"Cover me," she demanded, but there was a pleading tone to her voice, almost as if she were in pain. He knew what she needed, because he felt it, too: a desperation to mount her, to tuck her body under his and surround her as she would once again enclose him. The primal nature of it appealed to Sandor on a level he hadn't thought possible, not to humans. He wanted to dance in the woods, he wanted to beat a drum, he wanted to chase down prey while washed in the silver light of the moon.

He pressed deep inside her, his thighs pressed to hers, groin to her arse, chest to her back, and dropped his face into her hair, inhaling the perfume of her sweat.

Sansa had been right; this is how he had been wanting it, too. This was best, this was right. There was nothing outside this room, nothing that existed but the scalding clasp of her body around the burning length of his cock, the slap of skin against skin. Sandor draped himself over her and she hissed, rocking back to meet his thrusts. The feel of her under him, sweat making their skin slide easily, her body bearing his weight with surprising strength, was intoxicating.

Sansa felt on the verge of fainting, or climax; she couldn't tell which would occur first. Her arousal was almost unbearable. Nothing had prepared her for this act of utter possession; he was taking her, but she knew that she was taking him as well. He was at her mercy, needing her for the release he wanted so desperately. This was something he could only get from her, no one else would ever satisfy him, not after this melding of human and animal natures, just as no other man would surpass him. They were imprinted on each other for all time.

She needed something in her mouth, something to sink her teeth into, or to brace herself against when his thrusts started jostling her across the bed. When she reached the wall, she reared up and braced her palms against it. Sitting back that way shifted her center of gravity and drove her further down around his prick, already so deeply embedded. She gave a shout of agonized pleasure.

Sandor moved her forward, inexorable, until she was pressed up against the wall, sandwiched between the cold stones and his powerful, scalding-hot body as he lunged into her again and again. He wrapped his arms around her, filling one hand with a breast and the other with her cunt, cupping its plumpness in his palm and sliding his middle finger through all the slick to find the center of her pleasure.

Sansa slammed into a sudden climax, her entire being locking in a cycle of spasm and release. Sensations rolled through her, making her body feel thoroughly alive and present, and at the same time she was detached, floating above it all, watching the violent beauty of their coupling from a distance.

Behind her, Sandor's powerful form shuddered once, twice, thrice. He pulsed thickly inside her, and called out what he probably intended to be her name.

"Ssssaaaaaaah!"

As soon as he had control over his limbs again, Sandor let himself fall onto his back, Sansa still wrapped in his arms. He rolled them over, withdrew from her, flipped her onto her back and slid inside to the root once more, while he was still hard enough to do so. His legs wouldn't hold him up any longer, but he wanted to prolong the time he spent buried in her.

She seemed to have no objections, since she slung her arms around his neck and hitched her knees a bit higher, the better for him to sink in just that little bit more.

"Sandor…." She sighed and smiled, eyes closed in bliss.

He trailed kisses over her face, her throat, her shoulders. "… 'm not too heavy?" he slurred, sounding more drunk than he'd ever managed in his life, and propping himself on his elbows with the last of his strength.

She shook her head, still smiling.

"…so happy about?" Sandor managed.

"I didn't understand, before," she whispered, as if she were sharing a secret, or like speaking too loudly would disturb the sanctity of a holy place. "Now I know."

"Know what?" He forced his muddled, pleasure-soaked mind to clear, trying to follow her words.

"This is what we're here for." Sansa opened her eyes, piercing him to the soul with her earnest sweetness. She placed a hand over the center of his chest, where the hair grew thickest and his heart still pounded wildly. "This is why we're alive. All of us. We dress it up in fancy clothes, we complicate everything until life doesn't resemble itself any more."

Sandor stared down at her in silence. She was so loving, so kind, so hopelessly naive. Irresistible in her vulnerability and kindness, a magnet to those who loved despoiling beauty. This openness of heart would be her downfall, if he could not protect her, and his ruin, because there was no life for him without her. Not anymore.

Fear, such as he'd never felt before, gripped him.

There was no time to lose.

"We must go."


	3. Chapter 3

Sandor withdrew from her, determination dragging strength back into his body. He allowed himself one too-brief moment to admire the wanton picture she made: hair streaming over the sheets, moon-pale skin glowing, thighs sticky with their juices, nipples and lips red-bitten.

Sansa sat up and nodded. She did not fight him, or demand why. Her trust in his judgment pleased him. He would take care of her, just as she would take care of him.

With a last, longing glance, he stood. Through the window, he could see that the sun had just set, and twilight was turning the world blue. Full dark would soon be upon them.

Sandor made quick work of cleaning himself at the washbasin before bringing a damp cloth to her. She sponged her entire body of sweat and sex, and then he combed her hair as he had longed to do from the moment he'd first seen her.

"Where will we go?" she asked as she relaxed back into him.

"Depends on what you want to do," he replied, carefully untangling a particularly nasty snarl. "If you want to join your family, we should go North, but they're expecting that. If you want to survive, we should go to Essos."

"What do _you_ want to do?" Her face was intent, pensive, trusting. Sansa turned, meeting his eyes. He could not resist pressing a kiss to her lips.

"I want to keep you alive. Leave the choice to me, and I'll hide us at the ass-end of the Dothraki Sea until all this shite with all these fucking kings is settled."

She hummed in acknowledgment, looking pensive.

"But what use is there of keeping you safe if you're unhappy?" he continued. "And I think you _would_ be unhappy, so far from your brother and mother, idle while they fight for your land and family."

"Is there no compromise?" Her face was sad as she tucked herself against him, her face against the crook where his neck met shoulder.

"Might be. Could be. But there's not enough time to think on all our options. For now, we have to get out of this sodding castle. Once we're free of this shithole, we can decide where to go."

Sansa leaned back and studied him for a long, silent moment. "You're the bravest man I've ever met," she said eventually. "And the kindest, and the strongest. No one else I know could go through their first Change and still be so calm."

He grimaced, shaking off her compliment as he had her other, when he'd saved her from the rioters. "It's not bravery or strength when you have no choice," he told her, but inside he thrilled to hear her say it. "As for the last, it seems you've not met many kind men if you think—"

"It doesn't matter what I think," she interrupted him, but sweetly, and took a step that put her right up against him. "The gods think are you a fine man. You've seen the proof of that for yourself. Pretend you're not, all you want. I know the truth."

Sandor stared down at her. Her pretty face was set, implacable. There would be no dissuading her, and suddenly he didn't want to, anymore. Maybe it was time that to think there were more to him than mere physical prowess. That he had some qualities beyond how efficiently he could intimidate and kill. Slowly, he brought his arm to embrace her slight shoulders and hold her to him.

"You've a job ahead of you, little bird, if you think to turn me into one of your buggering knights."

"Who wants a knight?" she scoffed, petting his chest, "when you can have a hound?"

Sandor stared at her, lanced to the quick by what she probably thought was off-the-cuff, jaunty, amusing; for him, it was a lightning-bolt of epiphany.

If he hadn't already wanted her…

Hadn't already _loved_ her…

He _had_ to protect her. And they were running out of time; Shae would be back, to see about her mistress' dinner, if no other reason.

"Now," he rasped. "We have to go. Now."

Sansa blinked. "We haven't— nothing is prepared or decided—"

"No time. We have perhaps an hour before they demand our presence again. I don't want to be here when they do. They'll demand to see proof of your maidenhead, and when they find it missing, they'll kill us both for treason."

Her eyes widened with comprehension. "Oh, gods protect us."

He gently untangled himself from her and stood. "You'll have to instruct me in how to shift on purpose," he grumbled, not liking to admit ignorance of something. "It just… happened, last time."

Sansa, just standing herself, faced him with an expression of such fondness on her face that he thought, just maybe, she might feel for him a fraction of the devotion that already pulsed through his veins for her.

"You did it for me," she murmured, and pressed a kiss to his jaw. "I'd have done it for you, too."

Before he could reply, she stepped back, still the tiniest bit shy of her nudity and her cheeks flaming.

"Look inside for your wolf," she said. "Or in your case, for your hound." She shot him an impish smile. "Once you find him, pull him in close, let him grow until he's bigger than you are. You might…" Here, she hesitated. "You're very bossy, so you might have trouble giving up control to him. But if you can't, you won't be able to shift."

He shot her a glare that told her what he thought of her 'bossy' comment, but she just laughed, somehow sparkling and happy in spite of the danger they were in.

Sandor shut his eyes and searched within himself for the hound he had become. He could feel the beast, its restless padding about in the depths of his soul, its fierceness one flame he did not fear, and once more was humbled that the gods found him deserving of such a magnificent thing.

He coaxed it closer with the unspoken offer of control, and that proved irresistible to the creature's wild heart. It leapt to the fore of his mind, and when Sandor opened his eyes again, it was to find he was staring down at two furry paws, the smell of their sex brutally strong in his nose.

He looked over at Sansa, pushing his snout between her legs, and felt his eyes roll back in his head. If he'd though the fresh, hot scent of her sex had been seductive to his human nose, to his canine sense of smell, she was enough to knock him to his knees.

Sansa yelped, "Cold nose!" and batted him away. "Revenge shall be mine," she scolded, going to the door. Sandor just let his tongue loll out, laughing as much as he could in that form.

Sansa unbolted and opened the door, just enough to get a canine head into the gap, and with a rolling shiver down her body, shifted into the wolf.

 _Such elegance, even on four legs,_ Sandor thought. He would enjoy spending the rest of his life admiring it in her.

It was almost laughably easy for them to leave the Red Keep, and the King's Landing. Their ears and noses alerted them to any dangers well in advance, and being lower to the ground helped them keep a profile so low that no one so much as glanced their way. Once they slunk through the Iron Gate while the guards were taking a piss, there was but a short clearing before they entered a wood that thickened as they pressed deeper.

They set an easy pace. His hound, a beast of unusual proportions, just like Sandor himself, had long legs and a powerful chest. He felt like he could run for days without tiring, but all the intriguing scents of the forest were more than a little distracting, so that slowed him down a bit.

The sky was barely hinting at dawn when he jogged to a stop in a little clearing and started pushing at the hound to release him. It was reluctant, but finally he overcame it. Abruptly he had skin again, instead of fur, and hands where paws had been. His senses shrank to where he almost felt crippled, blind and deaf and… and what did one call it, when one's sense of smell went from all-encompassing to barely noticeable? He felt its loss like an amputated limb.

Beside him, Sansa had shifted back to her human form as well and stood there, trembling with cold in the chill early-morning damp. He sat, leaning back against a tree trunk before pulling her into his lap.

"We'll stay shifted as much as we can," he told her, "and live rough, until we decide where we're going." He peered into the ever-lightening sky, a slender shoot of doubt taking root in his belly. She was an aristocrat, not used to deprivation and hardship. Not this kind of hardship, at least. "Will that be— can you do that? I can try to go back, get as many dragons as I can carry—"

"This is fine," she said, softening her interruption with a caress to his cheek. "Anything is better than staying there. And—"

She stopped, cocking her to head to the side, listening intently, before smiling.

"—we'll have an escort that will keep us safe."

Sandor listened, too, and heard a rustling off in the distance. He looked at Sansa, but she only smiled and stood before shifting back to her wolf form. He took it as a hint and did the same.

A twig snapped behind him; he spun and moved to place himself between the noise and Sansa. From the thickness of the underbrush gleamed eyes, many pairs of eyes. He could scarcely breathe as wolves started creeping from the forest, slinking between trees and around bushes until he and Sansa were surrounded. He marveled at how much bigger she was than they, and realized she was no mere wolf; she was a _direwolf_ , and that seemed to make all the difference as the others crouched down, as if bowing at her feel.

Sansa sat back on her haunches, threw back her silvery head, and gave throat to a long, mournful howl. After she finished, there was silence. It was if the entire forest had ground to a halt; Sandor couldn't hear a thing no matter how his hound ears strained.

She howled again, but this time, she was joined in her song by the others. One by one, the wolves— dozens and dozens of them— all lifted their muzzles to join her. It made his blood itch, somehow, made him feel restless, like he were being needled to sing along as well, in this chorus of a song he'd never thought he'd deserve to know the words to.

But when the howl was over, and Sansa looked over at him, he realized that she had translated the lyrics for him, and he'd memorized them despite everything.

When the wolves howled a third time, he joined them, raising his voice to the sky and singing his heart out for all ears to hear.

 _I have a pack,_ he thought, and felt a completion and belonging he'd never even permitted himself to admit he'd yearned for. _This is my pack. She is my pack._

Sansa sniffed the air, delicate nose quivering, then wheeled a quarter turn to the right and began loping away. He leapt after her, the pair of them the vanguard to the host of wolves that had joined them. He sniffed, too, and knew what she had scented.

 _Snow._

They were going North.


End file.
